95% Memory Usage?

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xavierq

Gawd
Joined
Jul 27, 2000
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562
After a couple days of running, my computer starts telling me its out of memory. Task Manager says I've got 95% of physical memory used, but nothing shows as using it. Resource monitor says there's a ton sitting in Modified memory, like there's a leak, but no process actually has it in the commit. I've checked spyware and viruses and everything comes up clean. How can I find out what's eating all my ram and how to stop it?

memory.png
 
It shows almost 10GB as Cached Memory. This should become available if needed. How was your computer telling you that you were out of memory? Did you get an actual error or did you just see the memory usage % and assume?
 
Windows fills your RAM with commonly used files so they are there faster when you need them. This gets kicked out as soon as anything else need to use the RAM.

Unused RAM is wasted RAM.
 
It pops up and asks me if I'd like it to start closing programs for me.

I've got the pagefile set to 512 because I'm on an SSD.
 
just let windows manage the page file? Your problem is likely self inflicted.
 
If I'm willing to look the other way on things like 16 gigs of ram not being enough with just Firefox running, and opening up my hard drive to dump whatever is filling all that ram to fill the entire hard drive as well, then sure. This has only started happening in the last few weeks, and I've had the pagefile set that way for a year already, so I'm unwilling to say that's the problem.

I'll post a screen shot next time it happens. I just rebooted so it's not gonna say it again for a while.
 
512mb for the page file? Seems small to me. I have 16gb and I run 4gb page file. Is there any reason why you run your page file at 512?
 
Have you checked the windows event log? Have you recently updated any device drivers?
If you can, why don't you post your memory resource view again but with a before (shortly after you reboot) and a 2nd one after you get the pop-up regarding memory shortage.
regarding your page file setup, that's not recommended. if you really don't want a large one because you have an SSD (i do too) than change the location of it, if you have a 2nd HDD.
 
Few errors in the last 24 hours, but all just things like Steam failing to load and such.

When I first got the SSD some optimization guide said 512 was good. I feel like every time I research it I find a different answer. Some said not to have a pagefile at all, that most programs don't even use it anymore. I'll try the things you guys have said, but I'm still looking to find out why it's doing what it's doing, since this is likely just hiding the problem instead of fixing it.

I've had this running about two hours or so now, here's the current screen shot:
memory2.png
 
From the image, you have 12GB available if needed.
So it looks like something specific happens when you run out of memory, possibly a memory leak, something not de-allocating memory when it should or something retaining a huge amount of data due to unforseen circumstances.

I note you are running SQL server.
Is this the full blown version or the local client version?
Have you "ever" observed massive use of memory by any application when the problem occurs?

I suggest killing SQL server and seeing if the problem stops.
 
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It's not an all at once thing, it happens slowly over time. That number creeps up.

Firefox frequently runs itself up to over a gig of ram used, and I'll close and reopen it and it stops. It's possible it's leaking it and not giving it back when it gets closed. But that'd be horrible on the part of both Mozilla and Microsoft if they were letting that happen. Maybe I should run Chrome for a while and see if it stops.

I am running sql server. You might have noticed devenv.exe in the first screen shot as well. I'm a developer, I use both for my job when I work from home. I can try killing sql server for a while and see if it helps as well.
 
Firefox eats memory like nuts. I have 16Gb on my MBP but if I use Firefox to work with our cloud app and use dozens of open tabs, the computer runs eventually out of memory. This is probably partly due to an update to OSX which seems to fill up memory more agressively.

Chrome is much lighter so I switched to that now. Other than that, boot daily. It's Windows after all.
 
Forget the "SSD optimisation" guide. Allow Windows to manage the size of the page file and don't worry about it.
 
B00nie said:
Other than that, boot daily. It's Windows after all.
Click to expand...
I just had to check the date, that comment sent me back to 1998 for a second there :eek:

Dunno what version of Windows you're running, but I never really reboot my Windows boxes unless Windows Update asks me to. Currently at 48 days of up-time on the computer I'm sitting at right now (running on Windows 8.1 Pro Update 1).
 
xavierq said:
It's not an all at once thing, it happens slowly over time. That number creeps up.

Firefox frequently runs itself up to over a gig of ram used, and I'll close and reopen it and it stops. It's possible it's leaking it and not giving it back when it gets closed. But that'd be horrible on the part of both Mozilla and Microsoft if they were letting that happen. Maybe I should run Chrome for a while and see if it stops.

I am running sql server. You might have noticed devenv.exe in the first screen shot as well. I'm a developer, I use both for my job when I work from home. I can try killing sql server for a while and see if it helps as well.
Click to expand...

If FF is leaking, try running it in safe mode. It's possible one of your extensions is holding onto windows, preventing disposal (e.g. I found that YouTubeCenter does that, so I had to disable it).
 
If it's that window that pops up and recommends closing a specific program due to being out of memory then it's not talking about system RAM it's talking about video RAM.

xavierq said:
memory.png
Click to expand...

Yikes that big orange bar is NOT normal. It should be a green bar of whatever size is necessary for all your programs, a tiny little orange sliver, then a dark blue bar filling up a considerable portion of the rest, then a smallish light blue bar at the far right. That huge orange bar means you have almost 10GB worth of data waiting to be written to disk. What exactly is your drives doing when this is happening? Because unless you just made a copy of some huge file on your machine, that orange bar shouldn't be there.
 
-Dragon- said:
Yikes that big orange bar is NOT normal. It should be a green bar of whatever size is necessary for all your programs, a tiny little orange sliver, then a dark blue bar filling up a considerable portion of the rest, then a smallish light blue bar at the far right. That huge orange bar means you have almost 10GB worth of data waiting to be written to disk. What exactly is your drives doing when this is happening? Because unless you just made a copy of some huge file on your machine, that orange bar shouldn't be there.
Click to expand...
He's reduced his pagefile to 512mb. That's probably part of the problem...

A pagefile that small will force the OS to keep moslty-uneeded data (data that it would normally page to disk) in RAM.
 
I think it is sql server causing that. When it fills up open task manager and stop the MSSQL service and see if it drops down to normal levels. I have had problems on my dev machine before where I had to set SQL's ram limit or else it would use up all my machine's ram. And, like your images illustrate it the process itself didn't APPEAR to be using an extraordinary amount of ram.
 
I've never understood why people run sql servers on their workstations.
 
chinesepiratefood said:
I think it is sql server causing that. When it fills up open task manager and stop the MSSQL service and see if it drops down to normal levels. I have had problems on my dev machine before where I had to set SQL's ram limit or else it would use up all my machine's ram. And, like your images illustrate it the process itself didn't APPEAR to be using an extraordinary amount of ram.
Click to expand...

True ;)
 
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